The sun shone brightly over the grounds of the Konoha Ninja Academy.
Unlike the gloomy, oppressive Forty-Fourth Training Ground, this place rang with shouts and the crisp clack of wooden Kunai colliding.
Under their Taijutsu instructor's guidance, the Academy children were practicing basic sparring.
A pale, slender figure strolled onto the edge of the grounds, immediately drawing everyone's attention.
"L-Lord Orochimaru!"
The Taijutsu instructor, who had been guiding the students, saw who had arrived. Awe and nervousness flashed across his face, and he hurried over to bow respectfully.
"No need for such formalities." Orochimaru's voice was calm, with a hint of hoarseness. He gave a slight nod, signaling for the man to relax. "I'm just here to see the children. After all, they're the future of the village."
His manner was gentle and elegant, and his golden snake-like eyes even held a hint of the tenderness an elder might show a younger person. The Taijutsu instructor was so flattered that he quickly straightened up.
Orochimaru's gaze slowly swept across the grounds before settling on a black-haired boy resting at the edge of the field, exhausted.
He walked over and crouched beside the boy, gently patting his head. "You're classmates with Sawada Hiroki, aren't you?"
The boy clearly hadn't expected a ninja whom even his own instructor treated with such respect to speak to him. He nodded nervously. "Y-yes."
"Could you tell me a little about him?" A faint smile curled Orochimaru's lips, warm enough to make anyone who didn't know him feel as if they were basking in a spring breeze. "What's he usually like?"
The boy tried to remember, apparently searching for the right words.
But in his memories, the name Sawada Hiroki was always accompanied by a peculiar haziness.
Whenever someone mentioned the name, it felt familiar. He knew Hiroki was his classmate.
But when it came to Hiroki's personality or what he did in class, the boy could never quite remember. The only thing worth remembering was probably that Hiroki had inexplicably graduated early recently.
"He's... quiet," the boy said after a moment's thought. "He doesn't really play around with everyone, and he doesn't talk much. But he also doesn't feel like the other kids who get left out. It's more like... he's simply not interested in that stuff."
That was all the boy could say about Sawada Hiroki.
He wanted to say a lot more, but he could barely come up with anything else.
"Oh?" A barely perceptible glint flashed in Orochimaru's eyes. "He never takes the initiative, and he never causes trouble, right?"
"Yeah! That's exactly it!" The boy eagerly nodded, glad to have found someone who understood. "He's like... a shadow in the classroom. You know he's there, but he rarely does anything that makes you pay special attention to him."
Like a mature, awkward spy pretending to be a child, and not very good at hiding it.
That was Orochimaru's assessment.
Those weren't the traits of an ordinary child. They were more typical of an adult, especially one who didn't like to draw attention to himself.
Someone like... his superior, Shimura Danzō.
Inside the training ground, Hiroki's consciousness was racing at an astonishing speed.
The system's abnormal memory and CPU usage immediately ruled out a physical attack.
There was only one possibility: Genjutsu.
Aside from the various emotional systems that affected his own operations, only Genjutsu could interfere with his memory and CPU!
He didn't have time to hesitate. In the split second before disaster struck in the real world, his mind issued the most urgent command.
Ctrl+Alt+Delete!
In his mindscape, a simple, efficient window instantly covered the deep blue desktop.
[Hiroki Sawada - Task Manager]
Under the window's [Processes] tab, rows of data were changing frantically. The top entry was highlighted in glaring red by the system, consuming almost all available resources.
|---|---|---|---| |Hell Viewing Technique.exe | 93%| 3912MB |Running| |Visual Processing.exe | 2%| 128MB |Running| |Survival Instinct.sys | 1%| 64MB |Running| |Consciousness Awake.bat | 1%| 32MB |Running| |...|...|...|...|
Hell Viewing Technique?! Wasn't that the jutsu that could plunge someone into an illusion of a pleasant dream?
That had to be it!
As expected, Orochimaru had used Genjutsu on him! It was even possible Kushina had fallen under it too!
Hiroki didn't hesitate. His mind became a mouse cursor, and he selected the malicious process named "Hell Viewing Technique.exe" with pinpoint accuracy.
"End process!"
[Are you sure you want to end this process?]
"Confirm!"
The moment he clicked [Confirm], Hiroki felt the heavy, swamp-like resistance in his mind suddenly vanish. The world became clear again, and his thoughts returned to their normal speed.
However, the clarity lasted less than a tenth of a second.
The instant "Hell Viewing Technique.exe" disappeared from the process list, a brand-new process with a similar name shot to the top with the same domineering force, maxing out his CPU and memory usage again!
|---|---|---|---| |Hell Viewing Technique.exe | 94%| 3967MB |Running| |Visual Processing.exe | 2%| 128MB |Running| |Survival Instinct.sys | 1%| 64MB |Running| |Consciousness Awake.bat | 1%| 32MB |Running| |...|...|...|...|
Hell Viewing Technique?!
Wasn't that the Genjutsu that showed people the sight they feared most?
How had one Hell Viewing Technique barely ended before another appeared?!
Wait...
Hiroki's pupils suddenly contracted.
He understood at once.
This wasn't a single virus file.
It was a sustained injection attack.
Orochimaru was adjusting his Genjutsu attacks in real time, based on how Hiroki and Kushina reacted!
Is this the test? Hiroki took a deep breath.
Through some method he hadn't yet identified, Orochimaru had established a high-privilege data channel with Hiroki's "system."
As long as that channel remained uncut, even if Hiroki worked fast enough to end a hundred processes in a second, Orochimaru could inject a hundred and one new malicious programs the next second.
The Task Manager alone could only treat the symptoms, not the cause.
He had to create a new program to stop the attack! Or find the source of the problem: the unauthorized connection that had been forcibly established!
He had to find a way to cut the connection, or... write a Firewall.
Just how was Orochimaru using Genjutsu on him?!
Hiroki was still thinking.
But then he noticed that, at some point, an inexplicable signal source had connected through the WiFi signal.
|Orochimaru-Open-Signal|[Connected]
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